Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

Bottom 10 Percent progressives are not enthusiastic about concentrations of wealth. But that's not what keeps them up at night. Their focus is on deprivation and lack of opportunity. They're motivated by empathy for people who are suffering, rather than outrage over unjustified wealth.

When I stepped into this world, I saw that we were all burdened by a certain kind of indifference to the plight of poor people. We were burdened by an insensitivity to a legacy of racial bias. We were tolerating unfairness and unreliability in a way that burdened me and provoked me.

In the operative opinion of the world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more;while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world.

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty.

We have no right to luxuries while the poor want bread.

Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most - that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.

As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.

Richness in the world is a result of other people's poverty. We should begin to shorten the abyss between haves and have-nots.

Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

I'm interested in illuminating the enormous disparity between vast poverty and the tiny upper class... This vast inequity is unfair by definition, and I am interested in illuminating that and, where possible, changing that.

Well, first of all, I think that a lot of the voters who are voting for the tea party candidates have really good impulses. That is, they believe that for years and years and years, the people with wealth and power or government power have done well and ordinary people have not. That's true.

Government has a role as well in what is referred to as redistributive justice.

The issue of wealth inequality is ... the great moral issue of our time.

In many cases democracy has not been able to solve the social problems like poverty.

There's nothing more unfair than a guy that doesn't have a job.

It is unjust to let any starve, when we think it just to limit the wages of the poor, so as they can lay up nothing against the time of their impotency and want of work.

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.

Income inequality is the central problem all the way across the world.

Inequality of income is bad for everyone, not just the poor and the middle class.

There is no excuse for inaction in the face of economic injustice.

More often than not, people who are poor... are right where they should be.

Social justice and economics are both issues to me.

There is no peace in poverty

Poverty is curable, but it’s just not done, because it's not profitable. And that is the kind of violence that's perpetuated on humanity.